In this column, the author reviews hardware and software products that could aid the fraud examiner. The author avows no relationship of any type with the companies, which represent or manufacture the reviewed products. The author’s opinions are solely his own and aren’t necessarily those of Fraud Magazine or its staff. – ed.
All of us know by now that fraud examiners need computer forensics software in their weapon sheds. One of the easiest applications to learn and use in the electronic arsenal is Monarch V9. This version delivers even more power for the fraud examiner than previous versions.
Monarch allows any proficient Windows user to master the ability to convert masses of data into useful information with just a few clicks of the keyboard. No additional programming work of any kind is required. Without assistance, users can bring existing reports into Monarch, transform them into live data (as compared to “static” data contained in printed reports), that can be sorted, extracted, and merged into other applications for analysis and comparison and then searched for hidden evidence.
At the heart of Monarch is a powerful data recognition and extraction engine that can pull data out of virtually any report file. (A report file is any text output produced by any other software application that’s “printed” to a file instead of printed on paper.) Reports vary from simple row-and-column to highly detailed with multiple lines of detail data, data in report page headers and footers, report titles or sub-titles, etc. No matter the layout’s complexity, Monarch can successfully extract, analyze, and export the data.